In the aforementioned copending application and in my earlier work as described above and including German Auslegeschrift DT-AS 22 51 173(U.S. Pat. No. 3,977,977), there have been described droplets separators of the aforedescribed type operating on the principle that repeated direction change of a gas stream subdivided into individual streamlets between plates of a stack will cause the release of the droplets by inertia. In other words, the momentum or inertia of the liquid droplets causes them to be carried against the walls of the plates and into the liquid-collecting pockets at the crests of the corrugated plates, these pockets forming vertically extending ducts by which the liquid is discharged. The gas traversing the stack of plates is thus substantially free from droplets above a given particle size.
Notwithstanding the aforementioned teachings, and previous work in this field, the relationships between the plate characteristics, the flow-passage length and the interplate spacing have not been fully understood vis-a-vis an optimum removal of liquid droplets from a gas stream. Considerable effort has, therefore, been expanded in perfecting such particle droplet separators.